England beat Fiji (eventually). Now the All Blacks...
The Ruck
Reynolds Alfie
3.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alfie Reynolds and Will Kelleher look back on England's victory over Fiji at Twickenham. For the second week in a row Steve Borthwick's side managed to win the match comfortably despite not being at their best. Plus, Fiji gave further evidence that they will continue to be a force to be reckoned with at international level.
With New Zealand next up for England, they ask how well the first two weekends of November have prepared them to take on the All Blacks. And, question who should play at fly-half, George Ford or Fin Smith.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times from an empty Twickenham. |
| 0:22.0 | Game two of the autumn is done for England. |
| 0:24.6 | I'm Alfie Reynolds. Will Keller, her is back with me. |
| 0:26.8 | Hello, it's just me and you today, is there? |
| 0:28.5 | No, Alex Lowe. |
| 0:29.6 | As he always is, is working hard. |
| 0:31.6 | He's filing downstairs below us in the press room. |
| 0:34.5 | So just me and you to review England's match against Fiji, another week, |
| 0:39.5 | another win, not a perfect performance, but they're two from two ahead of New Zealand. |
| 0:43.4 | Yeah, and they're nine in a row, Alfie. So I was just looking at up downstairs, but that's the |
| 0:48.9 | longest run of England victory since that record equaling run in 2016, 17 with Eddie Jones, 17 tests in a row. They've gone beyond the one they went on in 2020 when they, it was all bit either side of COVID. So yeah, nine wins in a row. Context around a few of them. They've played Italy in that, which they always do, but they've never lost to Italy. They've played probably the worst Wales team of all time in that run. They've played the US. They've had some creditable wins along the way, France. By point, Scotland close, after a long time of losing to them. Beating Australia, beating Fiji. They've beaten all the teams in front of them. And look, a lot of this pod, I think, is going to be talking about how they then make that work for |
| 1:28.8 | the All Blacks, but let's dwell on Fiji while we start it off. Yeah, I feel like I could almost |
| 1:34.1 | copy and paste my comments from last week, which were not a great performance in a lot of ways, |
| 1:40.3 | but a game where they were really troubled and Fiji had their part to play in that will come on to them. |
| 1:46.1 | Not a great performance but a close game where things weren't going their way. |
| 1:50.3 | They had the quality off the bench, they had the wherewithal or they've learnt the lessons to be able to get over the line |
| 1:55.2 | and actually end up winning the game really comfortably like last week. |
| 1:58.4 | Yeah and you look at the team that is on the field at the end of these games now. |
| 2:02.7 | And look, the bench may be quite different next week. |
| 2:05.2 | There might be a different approach. |
| 2:06.2 | But they had Jamie George, Tom Curry. |
| 2:08.9 | They had still Finn Smith in the 10 jersey. |
... |
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